Increase Your Vocabulary with Prefixes with Opposite Meanings

In this episode of our ongoing look at prefixes in English, we will look at seven groups of prefixes. In each group, there are two prefixes that express opposite meanings (antonyms). By the way, you can go here for an index of all my articles on the English language, or you can look at the end of this article for links to the specific articles on prefixes. Before you get to that final list, however, we'll be dealing with chickpeas, Hungarian music, science-fiction movies, orchids, current events, and Iceland... and they all are united by prefixes.

Above and Below

Two Greek prefixes that sound somewhat similar have opposite meanings. The prefix hyper means above, beyond, or excessive. The prefix hypo means under, less, or deficient.

I suggest you say these pairs of words aloud, so that you can hear the difference: hypoactive and hyperactive; hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia;hypothermia and hyperthermia.

If children are hyperactive (hyper, in slang usage), they are too active; frankly, these days, I feel rather hypoactive myself, slow, sluggish, and not accomplishing much. Hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia refer to blood sugar; the first means not enough, the second, too much. If your body temperature or heat (thermia) is low, you suffer from a below normal body temperature; if your body temperature is too high, you experience hyperthermia.

Sometimes a prefix can be misleading. There is no hyperchondria to correspond to hypochondria. Our word hypochondria refers to the location where, in ancient medical systems, it was thought hypochondria originated: below (hypo-) the cartilage of the breast bone (-chondria).

Before and After

The prefix ante- means before, while the prefix post- means after. Both of these Latin prefixes are used when we discuss the time of day. The abbreviation a.m. stands for ante meridiem, or before noon, while p.m. stands for post meridiem, or after noon.

A pronoun's antecedent is the noun to which it refers, which comes before it. The antebellum period is the time before the War (and if you grew up in a small town in Georgia, as I did, you do not have to ask which war). An antediluvian or antediluvial patriarch was a patriarch from before the deluge or flood. (Again, if you grew up in a small town in Georgia, you do not have to ask which flood.)

A post-apocalyptic movie is one which takes place after an apocalyptic disaster (such as the Mad Max movies). Post-colonial politics take place after the colonial powers leave, and post-graduate studies are those carried out after you graduate.

Good and Bad

If you have ever studied French or Spanish, you must have noticed that you have an advantage in dealing with prefixes that, like French and Spanish, derive from Latin. The prefix for good, ben- or bon-, and the prefix for bad, mal-, certainly illustrate this relationship.

There are many words that include these prefixes. A benediction is a blessing, literally, a good-speaking, while a malediction is a curse or bad-speaking. (Diction, of course, is speech or speaking.) If you are beneficent, you do good, but if you are maleficent, you do evil. A benefactor does good, but a malefactor is a criminal (does bad).

In and Out

Latin provides English with a pair of prefixes for these meanings. The prefix ex- (or e-) means out, while the prefix in- (or im-) means in. (That last wasn't hard, was it?)

Although the book of Exodus (a journey out of) does not have a corresponding In-odus, these prefixes often occur in a pair of words in English, for example, external and internal. You go out of an egress and come in through an ingress. If a building blows out, there is an explosion; if it collapses inward, there is an implosion.

In my last article on prefixes I mentioned that the sounds of b and p are called bilabial explosives, because they involve air being forced out (explosive) through two (bi-) lips (-labial). I asked what a bilabial implosive would be, that is, air being drawn in (implosive) through two (bi-) lips (-labial). If you haven't figured it out by now, just hunt up your friendly neighborhood linguist, ask for a nice, sloppy bilabial implosive... and pucker up!

Large and Small

We turn to Greek for the next two prefixes. The prefix macro- means large. On the other hand, the prefix micro- means small.

So, macroeconomics is the study of economic activity on a national scale (or larger), while microeconomics takes a smaller view, looking at the economic activity of individuals and families. Speaking of a "smaller view," guess what a microscope gives you? A macroclimate is the climate of a large region; I'm working on an article about growing orchids in which I use the word microclimate, a climate limited to a single flowerpot.

Two contrasting words, macrocosm and microcosm, have recurred in the history of Western thought. The macrocosm is the whole big picture, the universe, while the microcosm is a small portion of it, in which some philosophers claim to see the pattern of the whole.

From 1926 to 1939, the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote 153 piano compositions that he called Mikrokosmos, ranging from little pieces that children can play to hair-raisingly difficult works that challenge professional pianists. These little compositions (the longest is less than three minutes) represent on a small scale (micro-) all the technical and artistic range of Bartók's compositions.

Same and Different

Greek also gives us these two prefixes. The prefix hetero- means different. The prefix homo- means same.

A heterosexual couple is made up of people of two different sexes, male and female, but a homosexual couple is made up of two people of the same sex. The population of Iceland is very homogeneous, coming from the same kind of people (-geneous), while the population of the United States is heterogeneous.

Once again, a prefix can mislead us. Scientifically, human beings are of the genus (related to -geneous) homo and the species sapiens (which means knowing, sapient). So, we are the same as what, exactly? This is a different homo (although, yes, homo means same). This form goes back to the word for human, which is related to the Hebrew Adam, which is related to soil, or humus (decaying vegetation, not the savory Middle Eastern dish of chickpeas).

Over and Under

Our final Latin prefixes have been in the news lately. The prefix sub- means under or below, as in sub-prime. The prefix super- means above, as in super-delegate. Sub-prime mortgages and loans actually have higher interest rates, because they are below the standards of the prime financial market. Super-delegates are those delegates to the Democratic national convention that are chosen above the fray of primary politics.

Although most of these pairs of prefixes have given us a number of related words in which each prefix alters the meaning (homogeneous and heterogeneous, microcosm and macrocosm, for example), these two prefixes do not have many such pairs. The two words subhuman and superhuman are exceptions.

Pros and Cons?

The truth is, those two prefixes, featured in this title, appeared in the previous article, on negative prefixes (here). You can also find my articles on fractional prefixes (here) and numerical prefixes (here).

Someone asked me the other day if I would write a series of articles on suffixes. In fact, since suffixes are not nearly as interesting or rewarding, there may be only one article.